Four months after Nokia announced its latest Symbian^3 refresh called Anna, the Finnish manufacturer today announced the upcoming version of the platform, codenamed Belle. Among the main attractions of Belle are the addition of new widgets, more options for customization, new applications and built-in NFC functionality.

The Belle widgets are live, free-form and resizable meaning commonly used widgets like clock, e-mail, music player, favorite contacts and the calendar come in several dimensions and have the ability of being resized. If, up until Symbian Anna, you were only allowed to have three home screens, Belle raises that number to six.

The status bar of Belle resembles the one of Android as it is now flat and incorporates pull down notifications tab a la Google’s solution, incorporating settings and notification of incoming messages, missed calls and so on.

As a direct effect of the Nokia-Microsoft deal, Symbian Belle now includes a set of Microsoft applications like Lync, Sharepoint, OneNote, Exchange ActiveSync and PowerPoint Broadcaster. And, while still in the business category, Belle includes built-in NFC support for all your touch-and-pay needs (and more).

There’s also an improved lock screen which alerts you of missed calls, messages and more, while the multitasking bit has been further improved with larger application thumbnails.

Existing phones, like Nokia N8, E7, C7, C6-01, X7, E6 and 500 will receive their Belle update and new devices coming out of Espoo will ship with Symbian^3 Belle out of the box. Check out the video below for more details: